Joaquin Miller

“ England looked upon Joaquin Miller as a young barbarian come out of the West, with a new harp and a new song. The Oregon boy became the lion of London. After his first poems were out, various great people wrote to him. The Archbishop of London [ua 2] invited him to take breakfast with him, and meet Browning, Dean Stanley, Lord Houghton, and others. The poor poet actually had not fit clothes to wear among the great folks, so he went to an old Jew to hire a dress suit. ”

“ Miller didn't write a readable hand and I would have to guess a great deal. I showed my relish for all this work in my Diary of March 22, 1869: Usual work and just as busy as I care to be. Began work on Cin cinnati [Hiner] Miller's poem —Joaquin. Looking back a good many years later —in the year 1918, in fact, I made an interesting note in my Diary: Had I supposed that Miller would achieve world-wide fame as a poet when I was setting up his wretched manuscript I would have
saved the original of Joaquin, Et Al. ”

“ But we have yet to notice our most and only famous literary man, who, with his gifted wife, determined to win distinction by seeking a wider field, and succeeded—Miller, fantastically dubbed "Joaquin." It is not necessary to advertise his merits—he has done that himself ”

“ He paid McCormick's one hundred dollars to have it fancily bound. In my diary here for April the 7th, 1868, I have: Very busy. Printing a short pamphlet of "choice" poetry. On the 11th, I have: Finished printing for C. H. Miller. Made 56 pages. Glad it's out of the way. You see I only mentioned matters of real importance in this Diary. My baby's new incisors were of much greater moment to me. Furthermore, Joaquin had not yet an aura of fame around his name. Miller had five hundred copies of each of these books made. ”

“ The voice is tremulous; the hand that is raised in the air comes down. Then lifting it again he says resolutely, "Swear, Miss!"
All are looking—leaning—with the profoundest interest. There is a dark strange face peering through a rift in the half-opened curtain. "God bless her! God bless her! She can, and she will!" mutters Forty-nine.
"She can't!" cries Dosson. "She believes the book and, by gol, she can't!" The man says this over his shoulder, and in a husky whisper as the girl seems to pause. ”

“ As the girl speaks, John Logan, the sick woman's son, a strong handsome man, only brown as if browned by the sun, with a pick on his shoulder and a gold-pan slanting under his arm, comes whistling along the trail. Seeing the children, he stops and says:
"Why, children, good evening! What are you running away for? Come, come now, don't be so shy, my little neighbors, and don't give the trail all to me because I happen to be a man, and the strongest. Come, Johnny, give me your hand. There! an honest, chubby little fist it is. Why, what have you got in your other hand? Been gathering nuts, hey? ”

“ What's your brand? What's the brand of your cattle, I say? I know every brand in Shasta. Now what is your brand?"
Johnny had strode up angrily toward the two men, and followed them up as they retreated. Old Forty-nine, who now was on the alert, and had his sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows from the first, had not been indifferent, but was reaching his tremendous fist [Pg 103] towards the retreating nose of Dosson. Yet it was too dark to distinguish friend from foe.
"Why, we are not rich men, stranger. ”

“ This place where the baby bears were found was first owned by three men or, rather, by two men and a boy. One of the men was known as Mountain Joe. He had once been a guide in the service of General Fremont, but he was now a drunken fellow and spent most of his time at the trading post, twenty miles down the river. He is now an old man, almost blind, and lives in Oregon City, on a pension received as a soldier of the Mexican war. The [Pg 46] other man’s name was Sil Reese. He, also, is living and famously rich—as rich as he is stingy, and that is saying that he is very rich indeed. ”

“ Archimedes still holds his measured home;
Grim Marius his ruins as of yore,
And heart still turns to heart, as then.
Live by the sword and by the sword
Ye surely die: thus saith the Lord—
And die despised of men. ”

“ This tinge of Indian blood, that all men abhor and fear, and call treacherous and bloody. Across my brow at my birth was drawn a brand that marks me forever—a brand—a brand as if it were the brand of Cain. ”

“ The shadowed stream rolled far below,
Where men moved noiseless to and fro
As in some vast cathedral, when
The calm of prayer comes to men,
With benedictions, bending low.
Lo! wooded sea-banks, wild and steep! ”

“ Pretty, ain't she?" and he winks a blood-shot eye toward Stumps. "And when is it going to be my Carats? Pretty soon, now, eh?" and he walks, or rather totters, aside.
"Umph! I have got 'em again, Carrie. Fly around and get us something to eat. Fly around, Carrie, fly around! Oh, I've got the shakes again!" groans Forty-nine.
"Poor old boy!" and she brushes the snow from his beard and his tattered coat. "Why, Forty-nine, you're shaking like a leaf."
"He's drunk—that's what's the matter with him." Gar Dosson growls this out between his teeth as he sets his gun in the corner. ”

“ This woman, Bunker Hill, had been knighted by their queen. She had been picked out, and set apart and over and above all the other fallen women of the Forks.
Even Limber Tim, who stood there on one leg, with his back screwed tight up against the palings, began to like her overmuch, and to wonder why she also would not make some honest man an honest wife. In fact, many men that night recalled many noble acts on the part of this poor woman, and they almost began to feel ashamed that they had sometimes laughed at her plainness, and promised in their hearts to never do so again. ”

“ How shoreless lie the distances,
Before you come to question this
Or dare to dream what grandeur is.
The solemn silence of that plain,
Where unmanned tempests ride and reign,
It awes and it possesses you. ”

“ They 'd eat a gum boot fust!"
"Tell you what we'll do," growled the Gopher, "reform him."
"Reform hell!" said the sailor to himself.
"Come, let's do a little missionary business, and begin at home," urged the Gopher. "Get the Judge to reprimand him. Have him talk to him an hour, then let the Parson speak to him another hour. If he lives that through he will be an honest man, or if not honest he will at least be harmless."
Now they had no preacher in the Forks, not even the semblance of one yet, neither had they a lawyer or doctor, but this Parson was a power in the camp. ”

“ XIV. The sky is like an opal sea,
The air is like the breath of kine,
But oh her face is white, and she
Leans faint to see a lifted sign,—
To see two hands lift up and wave
To see a face so white with woe,
So ghastly, hollow, white as though
It had that moment left the grave.
Her sweet face at that ghostly sign,
Her fair face in her weight of hair,
Is like a white dove drowning there,—
A white dove drowned in Tuscan wine.
He tries to stand, to stand erect.
’T is gold, ’t is gold that holds him down! ”

“ Far away,
From mountain brow to desert base
Lay chaos, space, unbounded space,
In one vast belt of purple bound.
The black men cried, "The sea!" They bow'd
Their black heads in their hard black hands. ”

“ O father of waters! O river so vast!
So deep, so strong, and so wondrous wild,—
He embraces the land as he rushes past,
Like a savage father embracing his child.
His sea-land is true and so valiantly true,
His leaf-land is fair and so marvellous fair,
His palm-land is filled with a perfumed air
Of magnolia blooms to its dome of blue.
His rose-land has arbors of moss-swept oak,—
Gray, Druid old oaks; and the moss that sways
And swings in the wind is the battle-smoke
Of duellists, dead in her storied days.
His love-land has churches and bells and chimes ”

“ Three times now I have ranged the great West in fancy, as I did in fact for twenty years, and gathered unknown and unnamed blossoms from mountain-top, from desert level, where man never ranged before, and asked the world to receive my weeds, my grasses, and blue-eyed blossoms. ”

“ But the Parson did not pass on. He came close up to the boy as he stood there alone in the dusk, half trembling with fear, as the Parson approached.
The strong man did not speak at first. His face was terrible with rage and a strange tumult of thought.
The stars were half hidden by the sailing clouds, and the moon had not risen. It was almost dark. Away up on the mountain side a wolf called to his companion, and a lonesome night-bird, with a sharp cracked voice, kept up a mournful monotone in the cañon below. ”

“ They lord the land; they come, they go
At will; they laugh at man; they blow
A cloud of black steeds o'er the plain.
Thy monuments lie buried now,
The ashes whiten on thy brow,
The winds, the waves, have drawn away,
The very wild man dreads to stay. ”

“ In sheen of moss would hear her tread
And bend his eyes, but never stir
Lest he by chance might frighten her.
Yet in her splendid strength, her eyes,
There lay the lightning of the skies;
The love-hate of the lioness,
To kill the instant, or caress:
A pent-up soul that sometimes grew
Impatient; why, she hardly knew. ”

“ In a canyon here, deep, deep, away down in the darkness, where night seems to have an abiding place, where the sun sifts through the pine-tops timidly, where the loftiest trees tip-toe up and seem to strive to reach out of the edge of the chasm, there gurgles a little muddy stream among the boulders, about the miners' legs, as they bend their backs wearily and toil for gold. ”

“ All gone?"
"Yes, and to-morrow, Johnny?"
"To-morrow, Carrie?" called out Forty-nine, who was now almost drunk: "We've had a good supper, let to-morrow take care of itself. Eh! Let to-morrow take care of itself! That's my motto—hic—divide the troubles of the year up into three hundred and sixty-five parts, and take the pieces one at a time. Live one day at a time. That's my philosophy." And the [Pg 105] poor old man, Forty-nine, held his hat high in the air, and began to hiccough and hold his neck unsteadily.
The girl saw this with alarm. ”

“ You ought to be as happy as a bird."
"But I ain't happy; I ain't happy a bit, I ain't!" Then, after a pause she continues:
"I don't like that Gar Dosson. He was here looking for you."
"Here? Looking for me?"
"Yes, and he called old Forty-nine Old Blossom-nose. I just hate him."
"Oh, well, Carrie, you know Forty-nine does drink dreadfully, and you know he has got a dreadful red face."
"Mr. John Logan," cries Carrie, hotly, "Forty-nine don't drink dreadfully. He don't drink dreadfully at all. He does take something for his ager, but he don't drink." ”

“ So much time to think, bending to the work in the running water under the trees, on the narrow trail beneath the shadows of the forest, by the camp and cabin-fire, her face and hers only, with no new face rising up, crossing his path, confronting him for days, for months, for years—see how holy a thing his love would grow to be. This, you observe, is a new man, a new manner of lover. Love, I say, is a requirement, a necessity. It is as necessary for a complete man to love as it is for him to breathe pure air. ”

“ They swept, as sweeps some fateful sea
O’er land of sand and level shore
That howls in far, fierce agony.
The red men swept that deep, dark shore
As threshers sweep a threshing-floor.
And yet beside the slain Don’s door
They left his daughter, as they fled:
They spared her life, because she bore
Their Chieftain’s blood and name. The red
And blood-stained hidden hoards of gold
They hollowed from the stout ship’s hold,
And bore in many a slim canoe—
To where? The good priest only knew.
IV. The course of life is like the sea:
Men come and go; tides rise and fall ”

“ The sea
Below the steep bank seemed to run
A molten sea of gold.
Away
Against the gray and rock-built isles
That broke the molten watery miles
Where lonesome sea-cows called all day,
The sudden sun smote angrily.
Therefore the need of deeper deeps,
Of denser shade for man and maid,
Of higher heights, of cooler steeps,
Where all day long the sea-wind stayed.
They sought the rock-reared steep. The breeze
Swept twenty thousand miles of seas;
Had twenty thousand things to say
Of love, of lovers of Cathay,
To lovers ’mid these high-held trees. ”

“ They slid in streams into the stream,—
It seemed like some infernal dream;
They curved, and graceful curved across,
Like graceful, waving sea-green moss,—
There is no art of man can make
A ripple like a rippling snake! ”

“ He wanted to handle all the money and answer no questions. A drunken man and a boy that he could bully suited him best. Ah, but this man Reese was a mean fellow, as has been said a time or two before.
As winter came on the two blacks were fat as pigs and fully half-grown. Their appetites increased daily, and so did the anger and envy of Mr. Sil Reese.
“They’ll eat us out o’ house and hum,” said the big, towering nose one day, as the snow began to descend and close up the pack trails. And then the stingy man proposed that the blacks should be made to hibernate, as others of their kind. ”

“ Forty-nine will get drunk, don't you see, and then?"
"You're a wise 'un! Shake!" And they grasped hands.
"You bet! Now this is the little game. The gal and Logan, and the boy, will get here long first. Well, now, maybe we will go for the gal and the boy. But if we don't, we just lay low till all get sot down, and at that keg the old man's got, and then we just come in. Cattle-men, back in the mountains, eh?"
"That's the game. But here they come! [Pg 92] Shoo!" and with his finger to his lip the leader stole behind the rocks, both looking back over their shoulders, as Carrie entered the camp. ”